I remember when I was a young child growing up in Wisconsin I'd watch my dad change the oil in his Nash Rambler. He'd drain the oil into the ground. It's just what people did in the 1950s.
After the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio became so polluted it caught on fire, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in the early 1970s. At some point after that a law was passed prohibiting individual citizens from pouring oil onto the ground. Drop-off stations were established in landfills to dispose of used oil.
Fast forward to the present. Forty-five miles north of my home runs the "old" Pipeline #3. This 54-year-old pipeline spans over 300 miles across Northern Minnesota. Old #3 has been described as literally weeping along some of its seams from over 900 structural "anomalies" documented by Enbridge, the company that owns this pipeline.
I wonder how many oil changes these anomalies have slowly seeped into the ground. Last I heard, water is fluid and travels long distances underground.
Enbridge is proposing to "abandon" old Pipeline #3 without removing it or cleaning it up.
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To add to this narrative, in 2010 the latest grant of individual personhood to corporations by the U.S. government, through the efforts of Citizens United, allowed corporations full legal rights to spend money as they wished in candidate elections.
If American citizens have to abide by the laws that require us to keep the environment clean, why would corporations that also have the rights of individual personhood not be held accountable to the same laws as us?
Then there's this question: How can the old Pipeline #3 be replaced with a new Pipeline #3 in a different location carrying a larger capacity of oil and be called a "replacement" pipeline?
My hope is that we stop this mad race to cut pipelines through our beautiful land. My prayer is that we take some time to clean up our current messes. And maybe even try a different way of generating and consuming energy.
And if I'm wrong in thinking pipelines and the fossil fuel industry, for that matter, are not sustainable, I would rather err on the side of caution for my grandchildren and the environment, than on the side of corporate oil companies.
